AMSAT NEWS SERVICE
ANS-223
The AMSAT News Service bulletins are a free, weekly news and infor-
mation service of AMSAT North America, The Radio Amateur Satellite
Corporation. ANS publishes news related to Amateur Radio in Space
including reports on the activities of a worldwide group of Amateur
Radio operators who share an active interest in designing, building,
launching and communicating through analog and digital Amateur Radio
satellites.
The news feed on http://www.amsat.org publishes news of Amateur
Radio in Space as soon as our volunteers can post it.
Please send any amateur satellite news or reports to:
ans-editor at amsat.org.
In this edition:
* Fox-1 Z Axis Solar Panels Approved
* Second call for papers for 2013 AMSAT Annual Meeting and Space Symposium
* AMSATDroid Free smartphone satellite tracking App
* Open Source Development for MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV
* NASA Interns Build CubeSat
* Cal Poly and SmallSat 2013 Summer CubeSat Developers' Workshop video
stream
* Satellite Shorts From All Over
SB SAT @ AMSAT $ANS-223.01
ANS-223 AMSAT News Service Weekly Bulletins
AMSAT News Service Bulletin 223.01
From AMSAT HQ SILVER SPRING, MD.
August 21, 2013
To All RADIO AMATEURS
BID: $ANS-223.01
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Fox-1 Z Axis Solar Panels Approved
The AMSAT Fox engineering team has completed the design of the printed
circuit
boards for the satellite's "Z" axis solar panels. Each of these printed
circuit
boards (PCBs) will accommodate two Boeing/Spectrolab UTJ solar cells.
There is a hole in the panel for the lens of the Camera module that is being
developed by Virginia Tech. A sample PCB was fabricated and sent to our
partner SpaceQuest who approved it for manufacturing into our solar panels.
[ANS thanks Tony Monteiro, AA2TX, VP for Engineering for the above
information]
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Second call for papers for 2013 AMSAT Annual Meeting and Space Symposium
This is the second call for papers for the 2013 AMSAT Annual Meeting and
Space
Symposium to be held on the weekend of November 1 - 3, 2013, at the Marriott
Hobby Airport Hotel, Houston, Texas. Proposals for papers, symposium
presentations and poster presentations are invited on any topic of
interest to
the amateur satellite community. We request a tentative title of your
presentation as soon as possible, with final copy to be submitted by
October 1
for inclusion in the printed proceedings. Abstracts and papers should be
sent
to Dan Schultz at n8fgv at amsat.org
[ANS thanks Dan Schultz N8FGV, for the update]
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AMSATDroid Free smartphone satellite tracking App
App for Android smartphones predicts future passes for amateur radio
satellites for a specified location and period of time.
Basic features:
• Calculate passes for up to the next 24 hours
• Graphical pass display
• Map view showing current satellite position and next two orbits
• Update keps directly from the web or from a file on SD card
• Set home coordinates from User Input (Lat, Long or IARU Locator),
Network or
GPS
AMSATDroid Free can be downloaded from
Google at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.me.g4dpz.HamSatDroid
Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/G4DPZ-AmsatDroid-Free/dp/B00DK7XXYK/
For those with Apple or Windows mobile devices see
http://amsat-uk.org/2013/07/24/free-ham-radio-satellite-tracking-app-for-ios/http://amsat-uk.org/2013/08/06/amsatdroid-free-smartphone-satellite-tracking-app
[ANS thanks AMSAT-UK, for the above information]
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Open Source Development for MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV
Mako JE3HHT, the author of MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV, has released
these applications to open source development under the LGPL license.
This license enables developers and companies to use and integrate
MMTTY, MMSSTV, and MMVARI, while ensuring that all improvements to
source code are made publicly available.
MMSSTV has been a very useful program for receiving SSTV pictures from
ARISSat-1 and the ISS.
The MM-Open organization has been established to encourage and
facilitate open source development. Anyone may create public or
private branches of these applications. A set of Committers will
maintain a master branch for each application; the initial Committers
are Bob N4HY, Eric KE5DTO, Oba JA7UDE, and Steve N5AC. Packaged
versions of MMTTY, MMVARI, and MMSSTV assembled from the master
branches will continue to be available via web pages administered by
Ken VE5KC:
http://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmtty.phphttp://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmvari.phphttp://hamsoft.ca/pages/mmsstv.php
Source code for these applications is available via GitHub, courtesy
of FlexRadio. Existing Yahoo Groups will continue to be used to convey
defect reports and enhancement requests.
For additional information about the LGPL license, MM-Open governance
model, and development process, see http://mm-open.org/
[ANS thanks Dave, AA6YQ, Secretary, MM-Open for the above information]
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NASA Interns Build CubeSat
A group of interns were recruited to work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center to conceptualize and design a small CubeSat within 10 weeks as
part of
the Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate.
Interns:
Anthony Yee, Christopher Erb, Jeffrey Sherwood, Tanzim Imam, Clayton Jacobs,
Tiara Johnson, Liz Sauerbrunn, Alex Petrov, Marvin Cosare, Matthew
Davis, Megan
Robbett
Co-mentors:
Pat Kilroy, Joe Howard, Gary Crum, David Kim, Anisa Jamil, Eric Young, Pete
Rossoni, Peter Ancosta, Victor Sank, Mark Steiner, Frank Kirchman, Jeff
Didion,
Franklin L. Robinson, Kenneth E. Li, Porfy Beltran, Dan Solomon, Leigh
Janes,
Gerardo Cruz-Ortiz
Pat Kilroy and Mark Steiner are both AMSAT members.
Please see:
http://spaceref.com/nasa-hack-space/interns-build-cubesat.html
[ANS thanks Space-Ref.com for the above information]
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Cal Poly and SmallSat 2013 Summer CubeSat Developers' Workshop video stream
Link for live video stream of the Summer CubeSat Developers' Workshop @USU.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cubesat-summer-workshop-
2013?utm_campaign=www.cubesat.org&utm_source=15530551&utm_medium=social
[ANS thanks Samudra Haque, PhD Student at George Washington University, who
posted on the AMSAT-BB for the above link]
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Satelite Shorts From All Over
Scotland Grid Squares Anyone?
Paul, 2E1EUB, plans to activate a number of squares in Scotland
for 2 weeks, beginning on the 5th of August as 2M1EUB. QRV on 160m and
80m, via satellites (mainly AO-7 B/A mode), and 2m in SSB. Skeds
can be arranged via email <2e1eub at amsat.org>, for updates see
qrz.com. QSL via home call.
(ANS thanks JoAnne Maenpaa, K9JKM for the above update)
Luca Parmitano making random ISS voice contacts.
Luca Parmitano was active on the ISS voice channel 145.800Mhz (145.200
uplink).
On Monday, 8/05/2013, I had a short contact with Luca anyone made an audio
recording? Please send it to my e-mail address see QRZ.com.
Thanks in advance!
73s Cor PD0RKC
[ANS thanks the ISS Fan Club and Cor, PD0RKC for the above information]
AO-7 makes ARRL Letter
AO-7 "Zombie" Satellite AMSAT Article picked up by the ARRL Letter
http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter?issue=2013-08-08
[ANS thanks the ARRL Letter for the above information]
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/EX
In addition to regular membership, AMSAT offers membership in the
President's Club. Members of the President's Club, as sustaining
donors to AMSAT Project Funds, will be eligible to receive addi-
tional benefits. Application forms are available from the AMSAT
Office.
Primary and secondary school students are eligible for membership
at one-half the standard yearly rate. Post-secondary school students
enrolled in at least half time status shall be eligible for the stu-
dent rate for a maximum of 6 post-secondary years in this status.
Contact Martha at the AMSAT Office for additional student membership
information.
73,
This week's ANS Editor,
Joe Spier, K6WAO
k6wao at amsat dot org